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Home Decorating

Is there a computer geek in the house?

14 years ago

Generally I can figure these things out on my own, or I google and can find tips and tricks for what I need. But this one is proving more difficult and the googled answer leads me to a website I'm not sure if I can trust.

Yesterday I was trying to save an image (actually, a tiny emoticon) to my desktop. When I clicked paste, a window popped up asking me if I wanted to activate active desktop to save the image - and stupidly I clicked yes. All of my desktop icons now have their labels in a white box and it appears as if each icon is outlined in white. It seems they all still open and work as before but I haven't tried every single one. I have no idea what active desktop actually does.

How do I undo this? When I google 'undo active desktop', I found this site linked below. If you look at line 16, that appears to be what I need, however, if I click it I get a security warning. Ideas? Thanks.

Here is a link that might be useful: #16 Active Desktop - enable or disable

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Comments (7)

camp56
14 years ago
Post your question on the computer help forum on GW. There are a lot of great knowledgeable folks over there.

Here is a link that might be useful: GW computer help forum
squirrelheaven
14 years ago
What operating system are you running under? I'm on XP and it seems to be set up differently than the below article. But see if you are able to do this to disable it:

How to Enable and Disable the Active Desktop

To enable the Active Desktop, right-click an empty area on the desktop, point to Active Desktop, and then click View As Web Page (a check mark appears). To disable the Active Desktop, click View As Web Page to clear the check mark.

Here is a link that might be useful: Active Desktop
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theroselvr
14 years ago
You can usually use the system restore (click start - all programs- accessories - system tools), restore it back to before you did this.

When saving images, I always save to a different folder, never anything to my desktop. I have a folder in "My Pictures" called smilies, or something like that.
DLM2000-GW
Original Author
14 years ago
camp56 I will try that later, thanks - heading out now

squirrel I saw that, too - I'm on XP Pro and use IE7 so that doesn't apply to me. I did find some instructions for XP but it doesn't do anything.

roselvr I was saving it to a folder - the folder just happens to be on my desktop!

this just get curiouser and curiouser - thanks for your help!
lindybarts
14 years ago
I always use the "System Restore" feature too. Sometimes that can be a lifesaver! Good Luck
yogacat
14 years ago
I no longer have XP, but the instructions on the site below look reasonable.

http://www.pcauthorities.com/windows-xp/turn-off-windows-active-desktop

Be careful about messing with registry entries unless you are very familiar with the process or have a good set of full backups. The other method described in the article above is lower risk.

I don't know that active desktop is the cause of the problem. Anything could have been downloaded with those emoticons. If disabling active desktop doesn't resolve the problem, I'd try to recover using System Restore.
DLM2000-GW
Original Author
14 years ago
yogacat I've already been doing the process in your link above but it hasn't worked. Just tried again now and for some reason, it took - obviously I did something wrong before, maybe I didn't hit apply, I don't know. Whatever - it's all good now - thanks!

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